Ohio’s utility regulators have allowed a coordinated campaign of fabricated public comments to distort clean-energy proceedings for years, creating a template for fossil-fuel interests to weaponize administrative processes nationwide. The state’s Power Siting Board and Public Utilities Commission have no verified mechanism to authenticate submissions, leaving developers, ratepayers, and grid planners to navigate a record polluted by form letters traced to industry-backed groups. That failure matters now because Ohio sits at the center of the PJM interconnection queue backlog, and every delayed or denied solar, wind, or storage project raises capacity prices for 65 million customers across 13 states.
How Fabricated Comments Became Standard Practice in Ohio
The pattern emerged in 2020 when the Ohio Power Siting Board reviewed the 300-megawatt Birch Solar project in Allen County. Staff identified more than 1,000 opposition comments sharing identical phrasing, formatting errors, and in some cases, the names of deceased residents or people who had never lived in the project footprint. Similar clusters appeared in dockets for the 200-megawatt Kingwood Solar project in Wood County and the 150-megawatt Madison Fields solar farm in Madison County. In each case, the board approved the projects but only after months of procedural delays caused by the volume of suspect filings.
Investigations by the Energy News Network and the Ohio Environmental Council traced many submissions to a network of organizations linked to the Empire State Energy Association, a trade group funded by fossil-fuel generators and pipeline operators. The groups used digital tools to auto-populate comment templates with minor variations, then submitted them through the board’s online portal under the names of real Ohio residents – often without those residents’ knowledge. Ohio law treats knowingly filing a false public comment as a first-degree misdemeanor, but no prosecution has been pursued in any energy docket since the statute took effect in 2019.
The Power Siting Board’s own 2022 internal review acknowledged it lacked “technical capacity to verify comment authenticity at scale” and recommended a rulemaking to require identity verification for electronic filings. That rulemaking was never opened. Instead, the board adopted a non-binding “best practices” memo urging staff to flag duplicate language – a step that does not remove fraudulent entries from the official record or prevent them from being cited in future appeals.
Why This Distorts More Than Ohio Permitting
That points to a structural vulnerability in how U.S. energy infrastructure gets permitted: the administrative record is presumed authentic, and courts reviewing agency decisions rarely look behind the comments to test their provenance. When a state siting board or federal agency like FERC relies on “substantial evidence in the record” to justify a denial, fabricated opposition becomes evidence. In PJM territory, where 2,000 gigawatts of generation and storage sit in interconnection queues, even a six-month delay on a single 200-megawatt solar project can shift capacity auction clearing prices by $2-$4 per megawatt-day across the footprint – roughly $150-$300 million in annual cost to load-serving entities, based on recent BRA results.
By comparison, the Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 crackdown on fake consumer reviews established a precedent: platforms that host user-generated content can be liable if they fail to deploy reasonable verification. No equivalent framework exists for energy regulatory dockets. The Council of State Governments’ 2024 survey found that only 11 of 50 state utility commissions require any form of identity verification for electronic comments, and just three – California, New York, and Colorado – mandate that staff report suspected fraud to law enforcement. Ohio is not among them.
If this trend holds, developers will increasingly factor “comment-risk premiums” into project finance models for Midwestern solar and storage. A 2023 Wood Mackenzie survey of U.S. renewable developers found that 68 percent now budget for legal and consulting costs to challenge fraudulent records, averaging $120,000-$250,000 per project in states with known astroturfing activity. Those costs ultimately flow to ratepayers through higher power purchase agreement prices or utility ownership costs approved in rate cases.
Who This Affects
- Utility planner: Must model higher reserve margins and capacity prices in Ohio zones because fraudulent comments delay 1.2 GW of solar and 400 MW of storage currently in OPSB review, pushing in-service dates past 2026 peak-load forecasts.
- Solar or storage developer: Should allocate $150,000-$300,000 per Ohio project for record-clearing motions, forensic comment analysis, and potential mandamus actions to compel OPSB to strike fraudulent filings.
- Policy analyst: Needs to track whether Ohio’s inaction triggers a FERC complaint under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act, arguing that manipulated state records unjustly discriminate against interstate commerce in wholesale markets.
- Grid operator (PJM): Faces growing uncertainty in Ohio zonal capacity accreditation because delayed projects reduce ELCC values for solar in the AEP and Dayton zones, affecting reliability planning for 2025/26 delivery year.
What to Watch Next
- Whether the Ohio Attorney General opens an investigation into the Empire State Energy Association’s comment-generation operation under the state’s Consumer Sales Practices Act, which carries treble damages for deceptive acts.
- If the OPSB initiates the identity-verification rulemaking its own staff recommended in 2022 – the next quarterly meeting is scheduled for September 2024.
- Whether a denied project applicant files a federal lawsuit claiming due-process violation, arguing that a record padded with fabricated comments deprives them of a fair hearing under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- If FERC issues a policy statement or notice of inquiry on comment authenticity in state-jurisdictional proceedings that affect interstate wholesale markets, similar to its 2021 order on state subsidy programs.
Bottom line: Ohio has effectively legalized the pollution of its energy permitting record, and until regulators treat fabricated comments as the fraud they are, every clean-energy project in the state carries an unpriced legal risk that fossil-fuel competitors do not.
Read the full report at Energy News Network
Note: facts and figures attributed above to Energy News Network reflect that outlet's original reporting. Broader context, cross-sector connections, and forward-looking scenarios reflect independent analysis by our editorial team.
About this article: Drafted by Energy Ai with AI-assisted research and writing based on public reporting, then reviewed under our editorial process before publication.
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